Monty Python Scripts

Bull-fighting / The British Well-Basically Club

The cast:

The sketch:

(On the underneath of the bed is a presenter on a chair. The
underneath of the bed also consists of a flat as for current
affairs-type program, with 'Probe' written above narrator.)

Presenter: Many people in this country are becoming
increasingly worried about bull-fighting. They say it's not only
cruel, vicious and immoral, but also blatantly unfair. The bull is
heavy, violent, abusive and aggressive with four legs and great
sharp teeth, whereas the bull-fighter is only a small, greasy
Spaniard. Given this basic inequality what can be done to make
bull-fighting safer? We asked Brigadier Arthur Farquar-Smith,
Chairman of the British Well-Basically Club.

(Cut to a brigadier.)

Brigadier: Well, basically it's quite apparent that these
little dago chappies have got it all wrong. They prance round the
bull like a lot of bally night club dancers looking like the Younger
Generation or a less smooth version of the Lionel Blair Troupe,
(getting rather camp) with much of the staccato rhythms of the
Irving Davies Dancers at the height of their success. In recent
years Pan's People have often recaptured a lyricism ... (a huge
hammer strikes him on the head; he becomes butch again) and what
we must do now is to use devices like radar to locate the bull and
SAM missiles fired from underground silos, to knock the bull over.
Then I would send in Scottish boys with air cover to provide a
diversion for the bull, whilst the navy came in round the back and
finished him off. That to me would be bull-fighting and not this
pansy kind of lyrical, (getting camp) evocative movement
which George Balanchine and Martha Graham in the States and our very
own Sadler's Wells ... (the hammer strikes him on the head again)
Troops could also be used in an auxiliary role in international
chess, where... (the lights go off) What? ... oh...